Since the beginning of space missions, the Earth’s bulls-eye caught the interest of astronauts in the otherwise featureless Sahara Desert. Over the years, it has become a landmark for astronauts. At first, the circular pattern was thought to have been a meteorite impact, but now the 31 mile wide bulls-eye, called the Richat Structure, is believed to be uplifted rock, a circular anticline, laid bare by erosion. Some people call this bulls-eye in the Sahara the “Eye of Africa.” [14 pics]

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This prominent circular feature, known as the Richat Structure, in the Sahara desert of Mauritania is often noted by astronauts because it forms a conspicuous 50-kilometer-wide (30-mile-wide) bull’s-eye on the otherwise rather featureless expanse of the desert. Initially mistaken for a possible impact crater, it is now known to be an eroded circular anticline (structural dome) of layered sedimentary rocks. Photo #1 by NASA/JPL/NIMA

NASA explained, “The Richat Structure in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania is easily visible from space because it is nearly 50 kilometers across. Once thought to be an impact crater, the Richat Structure’s flat middle and lack of shock-altered rock indicates otherwise. The possibility that the Richat Structure was formed by a volcanic eruption also seems improbable because of the lack of a dome of igneous or volcanic rock. Rather, the layered sedimentary rock of the Richat structure is now thought by many to have been caused by uplifted rock sculpted by erosion. The above image was captured last year by the orbiting Landsat 7 satellite. Why the Richat Structure is nearly circular remains a mystery.” Photo #2 by Landsat 7, USGS, NASA

NASA wrote, “This prominent circular feature in the Sahara desert of Mauritania has attracted attention since the earliest space missions because it forms a conspicuous bull’s-eye in the otherwise rather featureless expanse of the desert. Described by some as looking like an outsized ammonite in the desert, the structure [which has a diameter of almost 50 kilometers (30 miles)] has become a landmark for shuttle crews. Initially interpreted as a meteorite impact structure because of its high degree of circularity, it is now thought to be merely a symmetrical uplift (circular anticline) that has been laid bare by erosion.” Photo #3 by NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Do you have 3D glasses handy? You need 3D glasses to really appreciate this Anaglyph Landsat Image shot of Richat Structure, Mauritania. Photo #5 by NASA/JPL/NIMA

NASA described, “To the right of the International Space Station, the circular feature in the Mauritanian desert is Richat dome. The 24-mile- (39-km)-wide structure was formed by intrusion of molten rock at depth, which domed the overlying rock layers upward. Rock layers of differing compositions weather away at different rates, so that concentric ridges have developed within the structure.ISS and Richat Dome, Mauritania.” Photo #6 by the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center.

There are some people who try to attribute the Richat Structure in Oudane, Mauritania, as being lasered into the Earth by aliens. Photo #7 by Johnnie Shannon

The Eye of Africa as seen from Google maps – starting out far and moving closer to the Richat Structure, Oudane, Mauritania. Photo #8 by Google Maps

Geologically, this anticline is a fold in the Earth, rock layers exposed by hot desert winds. The oldest rock beds at at its center core, with younger rocks in the outward circular form. Photo #11 by Google Maps

The rings that form the Earth’s bulls-eye, the Richat Structure, are made of 200 – 500 million-years-old Paleozoic quartzite. Photo #12 by Google Maps

I have a suggestion. It looks like a hole that could have been opened up when God flooded the Earth. “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” -Genesis 7:11

Later God plugged the holes: “The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained” – Genesis 8:2

The article says the circle is the result of an upheaval (from underneath) not concave like the impact from a meteor. Just my thoughts.

There can be no question that it is a standing shock wave. It is well known that it is not a result of direct impact. I have a theory that I have not seen posted elsewhere.

I think it is a shockwave as a result of a large object impact at the antipode of this location. The current antipode to the Richat Structure is East of the Coral Sea. Tectonic plate movements may have shifted the actual impact. This makes the most sense to me. The structure is simply too symmetrical and undulating to be anything BUT a shockwave. If this is correct, it would have formed very rapidly and would have been incredible to witness.

I’m by no means an expert…but If it is the result of erosion, where are the “dome” sediments? Hard to believe that they all blew away and were subsequently partially replaced by sand. If the rocks were not significantly metamorphosed by the presumed heat and pressure of a bolide impact…then maybe the site was under water (i.e., Atlantic) at the time of impact. (Is there any evidence in sediments to support this idea?) The thought being that water would “cushion” the blow and dissipate heat.

Not buying the antipodal explaination…the earth is not that perfect of a sphere to produce such a “clean” and relatively small crater.

I only posted this as a theory. I cannot think of any other mechanism that would create the symmetry of undulating concentric rings. The shock pattern does not require that Earth be ‘perfectly’ symmetric. For a very, very crude example of energy dissipation in a semi-spherical object, go watch youtube (search water balloon thrown at face). Notice the pattern. Granted this example is not meant to prove anything other than how envergy travels in a semi-spherical mass. Yes, the Earth is not isotropic, but a simulation could be performed (nice graduate thesis).

It would be nice to have a CFD model to test. Analogous to our discovery of how Type 1A supernova occur.

The default geologic dome theory just doesn’t seem to fit at all. Although one can see erosion effects (dendritic drainage), erosion doesn’t happen with undulating annular symmetry to my knowledge.

There are actually models describing damage created by shockwaves at the antipode of where meteors land (for very large ones). End results are often lava flows and other volcanic activity. Nothing quite resembling this. One such example on earth could potentially be the archipelago of Hawaii being at the antipode of the Morokweng crater. such similar observations can be made on mars etc. etc.

So far several thousand geologists and other scientists have been all over this formation, so unless every one of them is part of some gigantic plot, it seems safe to assume that they are correct that this is a perfectly natural phenomenon, even if it is thus far not completely understood.

Nothing, however, will ever satisfy the usual religious and conspiracy whackjobs, so this will be fodder for their delusions, probably forever.

I would suggest that this is an ancient impact site from early earth. Why is their a lack of shock metamorphism over the entire planet? The entire planet was created by a blitzkrieg of meteors and this feature I would suggest is much older and initially larger then the geologist are giving it credit. This is rock that was heated and fused at a depth below the impact crater. The original impact crater has completely been eroded away over the last 4 billion years and all the remains is the fused rock directly below the impact crater. Geologic movements have undulated this formation numerous times and this has caused it to bow into a convex shape. That would be my thoughts, as worthless as they may be.

Again… The Great Wall of China is NOT visible from space! That was just propaganda from China… Think about it, the wall may be very long, but it’s only 10-20 meters wide at most which is far too small to be seen from space without optical aid…

[…] All the Eye of Sahara pictures you can feast upon. Mind you, it is so freaking big, you walk on it you also dunno you are walking on it. Must see from space. Earth’s Bulls-Eye, the Eye of Africa, Landmark for Astronauts (14 PICS) […]

I believe it was indeed an impact from space. The velocity at impact was at a snails pace by todays meteors. The area may well have been submerged at the time. Much older than we imagine. It was moltened and soft. It did not vaporize but spread in the configuration of what looks like the eye’s well or socket. Some of it folded over and created the ridge on impact due to the angle of travel.

I recently learned that the Sahara Desert in Africa was once lavish and tropical. Due to the weather patterns changing. The northern area of Africa was not always a desert. About every 2,000 years this could change. They have found mass quantities of water under the Sahara and are currently pumping the water out. Eventually it will run out but by then, who knows, the weather pattern may change again. If this happens in the Sahara over and over, going from one extreme to the next, I can only imagine how that could have formed the eye. I wonder if there are mass amnounts of water under that area. That is my best guess in layman’s terms.

I saw this from a private jet aircraft on a flight from Canary Islands to Lagos in 1981. I guessed a meteor crater and thought I should have heard of this crater but had not. Years later I remembered this observation and did a google search for “crater west africa” and found this. I recognized the very circular shape immediately. I was flying a 35000 ft and realized it was 10’s of miles across.

I like the theory of shock wave impact from meteor strike on opposite side of earth, but have no expertise to comment.

This is in reference to the “Eye of the Sahara”: When I was in the US Air Force (1970-1990), I was part of a C130 flight crew the first 8 years of my career. I saw many “unusual” sights and strange phenomenon” from the air. At that time, we were given to not discuss any strange sightings with anyone. During a flight is support of the Sep 1974 “King Grain Operation” (Google) to Africa from the Canary Islands, we sighted a very unusual sight. WE were flying between 15K and 20K feet. C130’s are low flying aircraft. We say a rock formation that appeared to be 2 circles of rock formation out in the middle of nowhere. Our navigator checked the map and found nothing on the map. We did not know nor had any idea on what it might have been. For the past 38 years, I had been wondering what it was we flew over. I had been searching for all these years. Then our new technology “Google” came. I just saw this “Eye of the Sahara” that the space lab had found during one of their fly over. We saw this rock formation many years before this finding came out. I feel better that we were not the only one that had seen this but we are still wondering what it is that caused this. There is one more sighting that I am still wondering about and will post when I ever I do find out what that other sighting is. Many mysteries of our earth.

People. I guarantee this is a meteor impact site. I’ve been working for 10+ years on a method to recognize impact sites. I discovered “Kebira”, in east Africa, almost a year before the people in Boston announced its’ discovery. “Wells for Darfur”? What do you think that underground lake is in? I believe I have also discovered where the moon (?) hit the earth, causing earths wobble AND causing the moon to be heavier on one side (and non-rotating). “The eye” is “bulging” up?? Look at craters on other planets, etc., with lower gravity…some bulge up. Even though the planet is MADE OF impacts, no one (experts) will listen, unless you have “papers” (a degree). You know meteor strikes are mineral concentrators, right? Like the Russian quadrillion diamond discovery last year (announced). I have SO VERY MANY re-definitions, and sites of likely riches, it blows my mind that “educated” people seem uninterested in it! And I’ve tried a few! What do you think the “establishment” originally thought about the existence of individual fingerprints identifying each person? How about “bloodspatter” “technology”? You know it took 55 years for continental drift to be proven correct? The discoverer, who, no doubt, took a lot of …guff…was, of course, DEAD by the time the “experts” came around! How about this…why DID the Mayans (and others) suggest humanity learn to get along, in order to save the earth from another destruction. Could it be that, if we weren’t destroying each other, we could afford to defend the planet from annihalation? Maybe so.

It really, really does look a lot like an eroded dome though… I’d love to see a map of the different rocks, to see what they were. Imagine building up a dozen layers of clay or cake in a dome shape, then flat slicing across it. These domes are everywhere (famous one across the UK) – but I’ve never seen pictures of such a circular one. (Perhaps a perfect bubble of magma pushing it up from below). Plus, the desert there is perfect for slicing everything flat.
The other thing it could be is a very neat volcano sliced flat – but I guess that would have been obvious to the geologists. Plus a volcano would have had a hard centre that would stand up like a tower.

Some truth to the underground lake theories. A “Maar” is the result of groundwater coming into contact with molten rock. The shape we see with the Eye is a shallow volcanic depression that was at one time below the surface but through millions of years of erosion has been revealed as an odd shaped eye. Deserts are absolutely full of groundwater lakes, some(at least)are almost circular shaped

Just for fun, an interesting story about its circular shape would be that the center of the Earth’s rotational axis was at this point billions of years ago when the surface was still not completely solid, but because of the tectonic movement, it has shifted here. And the other end is now somewhere inside the sea. 😉 😀
BTW, people claiming that its an impact creator are incorrect. Scientists have found no evidence of an impact at this place.

I agree with the low velocity impact idea. However, I think this could be the landing site for a spacecraft. What better place to park the big (round)mother ship than in the Sahara? Could this be heat-melt from above the rock?

In Nuevo Leon State, in Mexico, we have a similar structure, not total rounded like this, but is similar in the concentric circles, this area is about 50 Kilometers north west of Monterrey City, you can see also this is formed for various similar egg shaped structures at sides of the principal, this area just to be a marine floor some 60 million year ago, and was shallow waters, to me this kind of structures was created when the waters lower his level and create a lot of coastal erosion, i belive this has more sense than the spinnin wheel theory, let me know what you think, the location is 26 North – 101 West

The Richat structure on Earth;
According to me is the “Richat structure” from the remains of a huge Vortex, with in the Centre a connection with the groundwater system, since I suspect the sahara once a large lake.

Looking at it, the first thing that comes into my mind is ‘a bomb’. Probably this is where the antediluvians detonated a ‘very high energy’ bomb. This has to be it’s epicenter. Nobody knows what it is. There are other places like this.
I have never heard of anyone to go there by car… Maybe it’s because i heaven’t read enough… Who knows… Or maybe it still is highly radioactive…
You know, an old city from modern day Pakistan, Mohenjo Daro, it is highly radioactive. Some man-made disaster happened there 11000 years ago. The skeletons are 50 times more radioactive than an ordinary one. They were carbon dated. Same thing in Harappa, Kot Diji… and many many many others…

Sorry but is no nuclear explosion, no ovni large spaceship, no meteorite, no axis or center of the rotation earth, no biblical relation at all, no sinkhole, the true is here with a profesional geology experts, they has the answer just identify the rocks and the origins of these, dont feel bad because you imagination of all that bizarre ideas is great, but the knowledge of the true as you can see in these abstract is always bored…… thank a lot for all of your hypotesis because those guide me to the real answer, and make a good exercise for ours brains

Are there any visible striations in the layers within the structure which might indicate that it might have been formed by a massive water whirlpool? A whirling volume of water loaded with silt and sand could account for the walls of the structure to be so perfectly circular. The idea of a meteor striking an underwater volcano sounds feasible. Such a blow could possibly have blown a hole deep down in the side of a volcano vent, allowing water to flow into a constantly receding underground water reservoir. Subsequent drainage could have removed all evidence of having been a meteoric access point to a water table by having been filled in with silt and sand. Have any tests been done on the floor of the eye regarding silt layers, underground water flow, etcetera? Just curious.

Are there any visible striations in the layers within the structure which might indicate that it might have been formed by a massive water whirlpool? A whirling volume of water loaded with silt and sand could account for the walls of the structure to be so perfectly circular. The idea of a meteor striking an underwater volcano sounds feasible. Such a blow could possibly have blown a hole deep down in the side of a volcano vent, allowing water to flow into a constantly receding underground water reservoir. Subsequent drainage could have removed all evidence of having been a meteoric access point to a water table by having been filled in with silt and sand. Have any tests been done on the floor of the eye regarding silt layers, underground water flow, etcetera? Just curious.
This is a new comment. It expands on the possibility of having been the result of a meteor impact and whirlpool theory.

1) It is accepted that this is not a direct impact (similar to Arizona Crater etc). There simply is no geological evidence (lack of Coesite).
2) The HUGE undulating concentric rings MUST BE EXPLAINED
3) Geologic dome does not explain #2.

I implore any geological PhD candidate to analyze the possibility of what I described earlier. This thing wreaks of an antipodal shock-wave (NOT direct impact, but result of an impact on the opposite side of the Earth)

I’ve heard of massive tidal poles right now in the sea consider a black hole meaning the water vortex will keep the same water spinning around for years… So picture something that big and massive cause the ocean floor to form this bulls eye.. Now that the water is gone we are able to see its effect

Catalina, thanks for your comment. My initial posting on this was last year. I used to be part of a US Air Force flight crew when we first saw this back in 1975, flying from the Canary Islands to Mali during an Air Force mission. We actually saw two of them. The other one is much smaller than this one. It had two rings of rocks. The inner circle rock formation was perhaps a few hundred to a 1/4 mile wide. The outer circle was just slightly wider, perhaps a half mile wide. We dropped down to a lower altitude to investigate. The mystery is that these rock formations were surrounded with sand and nothing else around it. At first, it looked like an old volcano crater sticking out of the sand. We looked and found nothing on our navigational map to indicate any volcanoes in that area. At that time, we were instructed by the military that if we see anything unusual from the air, we were ordered not to discuss it with anyone. This is not the first time we had seen unusual and mysterious sightings. On one of our over water navigational training flying from a base in Texas to the Azores, we also saw a strange and mysterious sighting in the ocean when we flew over the Bermuda Triangle. To this day, almost 40 years later, I am still wondering what is that I have seen. I dare not discuss it with anyone else lest they think I am “crazy” and just imagining things. I know what I saw. Even though I am now retired and have the freedom to discuss, I do not discuss these sightings openly in public due to being ridiculed.

Nature is molding the landscape, it may create a earth Coriolis forces of wind blow east to west and also exact center of earth based on inclination. that point is good indicator of global warming, it will determine future atmosphere.

Yi of little faith.
This landmark has been sketched into the earth the day that the Sun stood still for 24 hours. There are clear marks of the refracted rays of the sun leaving both narrowing and expanding impressions on the landscape as the moon moved into and out of position.

Well. If you are not going to reveal the truth to the world that this anomaly was created by the solar beam reflected off the moon when the sun slowed and came to a stop for a near 24 hours approx.4000 years ago, at least acknowledge there is no PHOTOGRAPH of the far side of the moon. and try to have a good day, living in your hypocrisy of lack of science.